NYU Researchers Create Cheap, Flexible Pressure-Based Interface

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @05:18AM from the where-would-you-put-it? dept.

Al writes "A super-cheap, thin and flexible touch interface developed by researchers at New York University and could be used to add touch sensing to all sorts of gadgets and devices. It measures a change in electrical resistance when a person or object applies different pressure. The "Inexpensive Multi-Touch Pressure Acquisition Devices (IMPAD)" consists of two sheets of plastic containing parallel lines of electrodes. The sheets are arranged so that the electrodes cross, creating a grid and each intersection acts as a pressure sensor. The sheets are also covered with a layer of force-sensitive resistor (FSR) ink, a type of ink that has microscopic bumps on its surface. So, when something coated in the ink is pressed, the bumps move together and touch, conducting electricity."

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Re:Presssure? by Peeet · 2009-03-31 05:58 · Score: 5, Informative

I think the more important typo in the headline is that the words "multi-touch" are not used. That is the most impressive part of this prototype above and beyond the fact that it is cheap, flexible, and pressure based.